Hurricane Power

by Sigmund Brouwer

  Hurricane Power

  Sigmund Brouwer

  Orca Sports

  Copyright © 2007 Sigmund Brouwer

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Brouwer, Sigmund, 1959-

  Hurricane power / written by Sigmund Brouwer.

  (Orca sports)

  Originally published: Red Deer, Alta. : Coolreading.com, 1998.

  Electronic Monograph

  Issued also in print format.

  ISBN 9781551438672(pdf) -- ISBN 9781554697953 (epub)

  I. Title. II. Series.

  PS8553.R68467H8 2007 jC813’.54 C2007-903144-7

  Summary: When David is confronted by angry gang members and malicious teammates, he finds out what it really means to run for your life.

  First published in the United States, 2007

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2007928530

  Orca Book Publishers gratefully acknowledges the support for its publishing programs provided by the following agencies: the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and the Canada Council for the Arts, and the Province of British Columbia through the BC Arts Council and the Book Publishing Tax Credit.

  Cover design: Teresa Bubela

  Cover photography: Getty Images

  Author photo: Bill Bilsley

  In Canada:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 5626, Station B

  Victoria, BC Canada

  V8R 6S4

  In the United States:

  Orca Book Publishers

  PO Box 468

  Custer, WA USA

  98240-0468

  www.orcabook.com

  010 09 08 07 • 4 3 2 1

  chapter one

  All right, I’ll admit it was stupid to point a water pistol—especially one that looked so real—at a complete stranger. But in my defense, I had just bought it as a birthday present for my little brother.

  Standing outside the store in the parking lot in the hot afternoon sunlight, I held the dusty old pistol, admiring how it looked. I couldn’t believe my luck. I’d found it in the bottom of a bargain bin—priced at next to nothing—in the back of a secondhand store.

  Also in my defense, it was only my second day in Florida. Miami, Florida, to be exact. I had just finished my first day of high school, about a block down the street. I didn’t know yet that in Miami, people have good reason to be nervous about guns.

  You see, I was born and raised in Wawa, a northern bush town in Ontario. People don’t get shot at much in Canada. And especially not in Wawa. Up there, if someone saw you holding a gun, they’d look around for a movie camera and stunt men. Or they’d think it was a cheap water pistol that looked just like the real thing. Which, of course, this one was.

  That was the third thing in my defense. My gun was only a water pistol.

  Anyway, this kid about my age—seven-teen—walked past me in the parking lot.

  He wore a leather jacket, even though it was hot. He had short dark hair. Dark eyes. He was kind of handsome and he looked really intense.

  He glanced at the gun in my hand and froze.

  “Hello,” I said.

  “Come on,” he said. “You don’t want to be doing that, man.” He had a thick accent. I thought the words sounded cool the way he said them: Chu doan wanna be dune dat, mon.

  “Doing what?” I asked, still thinking about the way he spoke and wondering if I could mimic the accent for my hockey buddies back home the next time I called.

  Then I noticed his eyes were bugging out. I had unintentionally pointed my water pistol at his stomach. That answered my question. He didn’t want me to point the gun at him.

  “Oh,” I said. “This?”

  I brought it up to show him that it was only a water pistol. Now it pointed at his chest.

  “What you want, man? I got no money. No drugs. Or is this some kind of Black Roses thing?”

  Once again I was impressed by his accent. I rolled that sentence around in my mind, liking the sound of it. Maybe I would try to talk like him tonight at dinner when I told my parents and brother about this. After I gave the water pistol to my brother.

  The kid brought his hands up. Then I realized I shouldn’t be trying to imitate his voice in my mind. He thought this was a stickup. Like at gunpoint.

  “No,” I said, waving the water pistol, “you don’t get it. This is a—”

  He didn’t give me a chance to finish. He snaked his right hand into his jacket pocket and pulled out a wad of bills.

  “Okay, okay,” he said. “This is all I got. Take it. Just don’t shoot.”

  Then my eyes bugged out. This was getting serious all of a sudden.

  “You don’t understand—” I began.

  He tossed the money on the pavement near my feet.

  I glanced down as the bills scattered. I looked up.

  He was already backing away from me.

  I had just robbed someone at gunpoint!

  An old woman got out of a nearby car. She saw my water pistol. She saw the money on the ground. She saw the dark-haired kid moving away. She screamed, fell back into her car and leaned on her horn. People on the sidewalk at the end of the parking lot stopped and stared. Then they saw the gun. And they screamed too.

  The dark-haired kid turned and ran.

  “No!” I shouted. I bent down and scooped the bills into my left hand. I still held the pistol in my right hand. “No! Come back!”

  I started to chase him. Money waving in one hand. Pistol waving in the other.

  He didn’t stop.

  Neither did I.

  He had a fifty-yard head start. And he was fast.

  But so was I. At school back in Wawa, kids had called me Greyhound because a big dog had once chased me across the playground. I’d been so scared that it hadn’t come close to catching me. I didn’t think it was a big deal that people said I was the fastest kid in town. It’s like a goldfish being proud that it’s the biggest fish in the bowl.

  “Come back!” I shouted again, my legs pounding on the pavement. I wore jeans and a T-shirt, but I had on a pair of Nike cross-trainers, so my feet didn’t hurt when I ran. And it felt great to push myself. “Stop!”

  We ran down a street with small shops on each side. Dozens of people slowly walked along, carrying shopping bags. The kid in front of me slammed into a couple of them, sending them spinning. Each time it happened, he turned back to see me still chasing him. That would send him slamming into other people. By the time they realized what was happening, I was right there to slam into them again. Even though I called out apologies as I sped past, I still heard angry yells and screams behind me.

  I figured out that they were responding to the gun in my hand by the time I cleared the last of the people on the sidewalk. I also realized the gun probably wasn’t helping me convince the kid that my intentions were friendly.

  Finally, I threw the water pistol into the street and just concentrated on trying to catch the kid.

  The sidewalk ahead was clear and shaded by palm trees. Now there were houses on both sides of the road. The kid in front of me didn’t slow down. I was impressed at how fast he could run.

  My breath started to come faster. My heart sounded like a heavy drum banging in my ears.

  “Your money!” I shouted. “I just want to give you your money!”

  I should have heard the warning siren. But I was running too hard. And concentrating too
much on catching the kid.

  I didn’t see the police car until it swerved onto the sidewalk in front of me. Tires screamed as it skidded to a stop.

  I was moving too fast to stop, but the front end of the car blocked the sidewalk.

  I smashed into its fender and flipped sideways. Rolling on the grass beside the sidewalk, I saw a big house and lots of wide bushes. I smacked into the bottom of one of those bushes and lay there, gasping.

  A split second later, the police car door slammed.

  I heard a thump of boots. And then I saw the boots on the ground in front of my eyes. Brown boots, as if that mattered at this point.

  “Hands on your head!” a deep voice said. “If I see a weapon, I’ll shoot first and ask questions later.”

  I did as he said. I would not be able to answer questions if I were dead.

  Handcuffs clicked around my right wrist first.

  Funny, I thought. The Chamber of Commerce brochures didn’t say anything about stuff like this.

  chapter two

  The policeman jerked me away from the bush. Then he pulled me to my feet. I sucked air hard, trying to get my breath back.

  I watched the other officer jog down the sidewalk, back toward the stores. A small group of people had begun to gather a short way down the sidewalk.

  “Okay, kid,” the officer said in a tired voice. He pushed me toward the police car. Its flashing lights blinded me. “What’s the deal?”

  He was a big man—blond, with a mustache. His dark uniform had darker sweat spots under the arms.

  “It was a mistake,” I said. “Honest. I can explain.”

  “Good,” he said. He pushed me against the back door of the car. The front door stood open. I could feel cool air flowing from inside. “Hands on the roof.”

  I put my handcuffed hands on top of the car.

  When the policeman kicked my left foot to spread my legs, I nearly fell.

  He patted the back of my shirt, under my arms and along the inside of my pant legs.

  “Who was the punk you were chasing?” He took a step back from me. I could hear talking from the crowd. “This have anything to do with drugs?”

  “No, no, no,” I said, still gulping for air. “I was trying to give him back his money.”

  “Why’d you take it?”

  “I didn’t,” I answered. “He gave it to me.”

  “Right,” he said. He sounded bored, like he’d heard this sort of story a hundred times a day. “He just gave it to you. Like he was tired of carrying it. Did the gun in your hand have anything to do with him giving you his money?”

  “Yes,” I said. Then I realized how that sounded. “Um, no,” I said. “It’s just that—”

  My head was turned sideways, toward the crowd. I watched as the other officer walked back to us, pushing his way through. He was blond too. No mustache. He had a donut of fat around his middle.

  “Punk’s heat was just a toy,” he said to the policeman behind me. He held it high. I had to admit, it did look real. “The government made these things illegal because of the trouble they can cause. Where’d you get it?”

  “Illegal?” I said. “It was buried in a bargain box at the secondhand store and—”

  “You see any others?” he asked.

  I shook my head no.

  “We’ll have to keep this,” he said. “Besides being against the law, it’s just too dangerous to let you run around with a toy that looks so real.”

  “That’s what I was talking about,” I said quickly. “The kid saw the gun and—”

  “‘Aboot’?” the officer who had cuffed me said. “‘Aboot’? That sounds like a Canadian accent to me. We get plenty of Canucks down here. You from Canada, kid?”

  I hadn’t said aboot. I’d said about. But this was no time to argue.

  “Yes, sir,” I answered. “My family just moved down here yesterday. My dad’s a doctor and he’s joining a practice in town.”

  What I didn’t add was that he was a doctor who had nearly wrecked his career. And that only a miracle had saved him and our family.

  The cop was frowning at me, so I hurried to explain more.

  “I bought that water pistol because it’s my little brother’s birthday. I was standing in the parking lot with it, and the other kid saw it and thought I was pointing it at him. So he gave me his money. I was just trying to give it back to him.”

  The policeman holding my gun moved up beside us. He sniffed the air.

  “You step in something, Frankie?” he asked his partner.

  The policeman behind me sniffed the air. “I hope not,” he answered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw him lift his left foot and look at the bottom of his shoe. Then he checked the right shoe.

  I sniffed. I smelled it too.

  A girl stepped out of the crowd. She had long, straight, brown hair and she wore a red shirt and jeans. She was a little shorter than me but probably about my age. She flashed me a small smile.

  “Excuse me, officers,” she said. “I go to McKinley High. He’s telling the truth. It really was his first day in school. I sat two rows behind him in math class.”

  One of the policemen sighed. “Frankie,” he said, “maybe we should give this kid a break. On account of he’s new in town. Besides—you feel like doing two hours of paperwork on this?”

  “Over a water pistol? You kidding? The guys wouldn’t let us forget about this for a long time.”

  Frankie sniffed again. He grinned. “Plus, this kid’s got enough problems.”

  “Yeah,” his partner agreed. “Too bad this sort of stuff doesn’t happen to the perps who deserve it.”

  I watched as the officer uncuffed my wrists. I turned around, rubbing them one at a time.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Forget it,” Frankie said. “Just pay attention from now on. You’re lucky we didn’t shoot when we saw you running down the street waving that pistol around.”

  They began to get into their car.

  “What about the money?” I asked. I counted it quickly. It was mostly one-dollar bills. “There’s twelve dollars here.”

  Frankie’s partner shrugged. “You don’t know much about this area, do you?”

  I shook my head no.

  “Let me put it this way,” Frankie said. “Someone sees a gun and gives you money that fast, he’s probably got a guilty conscience.”

  “Oh,” I said, not really understanding.

  “What’s your name?” Frankie asked. “Your phone number?”

  “David Calvin,” I answered. I thought hard about my phone number. I’d only learned it this morning. When I remembered, I gave it to him. He wrote my name and number in his notepad.

  “Tell you what,” he said. “If that other kid calls in a report about an armed robbery, we’ll get in touch with you. In the meantime, keep the money. You’ll need it for dry cleaning.”

  Dry cleaning?

  He laughed and shut the car door. The car backed onto the street. Its lights stopped flashing as it pulled away.

  “Thanks,” I said to the girl. “I think you just saved me a lot of trouble.”

  I sniffed the air again. I didn’t like what I smelled. But I was talking to this pretty girl, and I didn’t dare look around.

  “It was selfish,” she said. “I watched you chase that kid. I saw how fast you guys were running.”

  I didn’t get it. What did running fast have to do with anything?

  “Anyway,” she said. “I’m glad Dad called off practice today because of a teacher conference. Otherwise I wouldn’t have seen how fast you can run.”

  I must have looked as confused as I felt.

  “My name is Jennifer Lewis,” she explained. “My dad’s the high school track coach. I hoped if I did you a favor, you might do one for me. Would you try out for the track team? We sure could use your help.”

  “Um, sure,” I said. I hadn’t thought much about track. I’d always been fast, but in Canada I’d played hockey.

>   “Come out tomorrow after school,” she said. “We meet in the gym. I’ll look for you there.”

  “Um, sure,” I said again.

  She giggled. “But maybe you should find another shirt before tomorrow.”

  She pointed at the front of my shirt.

  I looked down. My shirt was smudged with dirt and grass from when I had rolled and smacked into the bush.

  And then I saw something else—something that explained the smell. Something that looked like peanut butter. But wasn’t.

  I groaned. If I’d wondered how my first full day in Florida could get any worse, this was the answer.

  “I hope your shirt isn’t ruined,” Jennifer said. “People who don’t clean up after their dogs are real jerks.”

  chapter three

  After my last class the next afternoon, I followed the dim hallways of the school to the gym. McKinley High was a two-story stone building, built in the 1930s. I knew that because it said so on a sign near the front doors. The sign also explained that the school had been named after William McKinley. He had been president of the United States from 1897 to 1901. Someone had spray-painted WHO CARES over the sign, along with a number of things I’d get in trouble for repeating at home.

  It wasn’t hard to believe that the school building was that old. The floors had yellowed under dull wax. The lights in the hallway flickered as air conditioners kicked on. The air conditioners rattled like a truck full of empty pop cans. The paint on the gray walls was peeling away.

  So I wasn’t surprised that the gym had scarred wood floors and an ancient scoreboard that hung above a stage at one end.

  I saw a small group of kids at the far end.

  I walked over slowly. I wasn’t sure I wanted to be here, being new to the school and all. It would have been easier to go straight home and do my homework. Not that I like homework. Back in Wawa, I could have found a hundred different things to do. Here...

  Here...I was just paying someone back for keeping me out of trouble.

  I put a smile on my face as Jennifer looked up from the group of kids.

  A man wearing a red hat concentrated on something written on his clipboard. His hat looked like the one Elmer Fudd wore in the Bugs Bunny cartoons. In fact, the man kind of looked like Elmer Fudd. Elmer Fudd with a whistle.